QVCS Product Family Newsletter - February 2006

Publication date: February 6, 2006

Qumasoft.com hosting changes
QVCS/QVCS-Pro: 3.9.25 Release Available
QVCS/QVCS-Pro: Pricing Changes
QVCS-Pro: In the Pipeline: Support for .dll triggers
QVCS-Enterprise: Planning for the next release

Qumasoft.com hosting changes

qumasoft.com has migrated to a new host.

The primary reason for the move is SPAM. For reasons that Verio can explain better than I, the hosting plan that we used for the past number of years did not do a very good job of preventing other users from hijacking the outbound SMTP server. As a result, many users block e-mail from qumasoft.com as SPAM because it originates from a generic Verio SMTP server that is apparently the source of a lot of SPAM.

Verio has assured me that the new hosting plan is one that does a much better job at preventing this kind of SMTP server hijacking.

You shouldn't see much difference (if any) in the qumasoft.com web site. If you do, please let me know!

QVCS/QVCS-Pro: 3.9.25 Release Available

The 3.9.25 release is available for download from the usual locations:

http://www.qumasoft.com/QVCSSetup.exe

http://www.qumasoft.com/qvcs.zip.

This is a 'free' update to users who have purchased their license within the past year. Users with older licenses will have to update their license in order to use this release.

This release has a number of usability improvements. It also has been tested with Visual Studio 2005. There are more details available here.

QVCS/QVCS-Pro: Pricing Changes

QVCS and QVCS-Pro pricing has changed with the 3.9.25 release. If you have already purchased your license(s), then the price change doesn't affect you at all -- pricing for license updates has not changed. If you haven't purchased a license yet, then you will be affected by the price changes.

I'm being a little coy in using the term 'price change' instead of 'price increase'. If you are buying fewer than 10 licenses, then the price changes amount to a price increase. If you purchase more than 10 licenses, the price changes will wind up being a price decrease. It's a little more complicated than that, but the simple way to look at it is that I've increased the base list price of both QVCS and QVCS-Pro (to $39 and $59 respectively), but added volume discounts to both products.

Prices for both QVCS and QVCS-Pro remain well below competitive products. (If you are aware of competitive products that provide a better value than QVCS or QVCS-Pro, please let me know!!).

QVCS-Pro: In the Pipeline: Support for .dll triggers

A long time customer is updating some of their internal processes and needs to get better performance out of QVCS-Pro's 'trigger' feature. The most straight forward way to do this is to change QVCS-Pro to allow it to make a function call to the customer's custom trigger code instead of always launching a separate trigger executable. This addition to QVCS-Pro's trigger functionality will be done in the month of February, with a release a the end of the month to include this new alternate way of invoking a trigger command. Existing triggers will continue to be supported.

This is an example of the kind of change that can make it into the product as a result of a customer request or customer suggestion. While I do not create custom builds of any product (except for testing purposes), I will always entertain a suggestion or request that will make for a better product.

QVCS-Enterprise: Planning for the next release

I'm beginning the planning stages for the next release of QVCS-Enterprise. This usually consists of sorting through various feature requests received from users over the past several months, scoping the amount of work each prospective feature represents, and then beginning work on the features.

It's not too late to get your feature requests and/or suggestions in. I make no guarantees that they will make it into the next release, but user suggestions do have a tremendous influence on what makes it into the product.